I hastened to comply, but Lou struck with the speed of an adder, her teeth sinking deep into the soft flesh of my cheek. I reared backward with a roar. Lifting her knee with alarming force, she connected with my groin. I folded instantly at the spike of white-hot pain. Stars dotted my vision, and waves of nausea wracked my frame. Vaguely, I heard Lou spring to her feet. But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Célie nudged my ribs with her boot. “Get up,” she said, voice low and panicked. Glass crunched and bodies thudded somewhere beyond me. She kicked my side again. “She’s getting away. Get up!”

Groaning, I forced myself to my feet. Though my entire lower half ached, I leapt to join Beau and Thierry near the door, where they struggled to contain Lou. She hissed and spat as Coco tried to force blood to her lips. With one man holding her on each side, I stepped behind, wrapping an arm around her waist and seizing her hair in my fist. I forced her head backward. The movement bared her face to Coco, who acted quickly, smearing blood across Lou’s mouth.

Lou screamed and seized instantly. Blisters formed where the blood touched her lips.

“What is it?” I asked wildly. My stomach rioted with fear, with regret, with treacherous, treasonous resolve. I did not let go. “What’ve you done?”

“I thought your blood would just subdue her—” Beau’s frantic voice echoed my own. He watched in horror as Lou’s back bowed, as she finally slumped in our arms.

Coco stepped back, eyes blazing with satisfaction. “The blood of an enemy poisons.”

The blood of an enemy poisons.

Nonsensical words. Ludicrous ones. And yet . . .

Realization began to take shape in my gut, even as my mind still protested.

Beau shook Lou with rising hysteria, his breath labored. His face red. “What the fuck does that mean?” He shook her harder. “Is she—have we just—?” But Coco only grasped Lou’s chin in answer, forcing open one fluttering eyelid. She isn’t dead. I repeated the words, trying to calm the thunderous beat of my heart. To ignore my mounting apprehension. She isn’t dead. She isn’t dead. She isn’t dead. She’s just—

“You said something was clearly wrong with her.” Coco retrieved her locket from where it’d fallen to the ground. Lou twitched in response. “You said it went beyond grief.”

“That doesn’t mean we poison her,” Beau said incredulously. “She’s still Lou. She’s still my sister.”

“No.” Coco shook her head with vehemence. “She isn’t.”

Lifting the mirror in the locket to Lou, she revealed the stark truth at last: I held long black hair in my hand, not white. The waist I clasped wasn’t right either. Though I couldn’t feel her bones beneath my fingers, I could see each rib in her reflection. Her skin appeared sickly. Alabaster pale. Not the smooth and freckled gold I loved. And scarred—so very scarred.

My pulse slowed to a dull, steady rhythm as I took in the truth. A poison all its own. I felt its cold touch in my chest, felt it crystallize around my heart. When it crept down my spine, my legs—debilitating me—my knees gave out, and I crumpled, dragging Lou’s body down with me. I stared at her slack face in my lap. Those dark circles beneath her eyes had deepened since yesterday. Her cheeks had grown sharper. She’d been fighting an altogether different poison. A disease.

Nicholina le Clair.

Fire burst through the ice like lava, melting everything in its path. My hands shook. My chest heaved. “Get her out,” I snarled.

No Rose Without a Thorn

Reid

Coco crossed to the door swiftly in answer, throwing it open, allowing sun to stream into the dilapidated room. But the sun—it did little to banish the shadows now. Instead, it refracted rainbows of light across broken mirrors, and those broken mirrors . . . they didn’t work right either. They reflected Lou back to me.

This wasn’t Lou.

“Get her out,” I repeated, engulfing the would-be Lou in my arms. My shoulders—my back—rounded to shield her from her own reflection. She didn’t stir at the contact. Beneath my fingers, her pulse felt thready and weak. Her skin even colder than usual. “Get her out now.”

“We need to move.” Coco hurried back to my side, looping an arm under mine. She tried to hoist me to my feet as angry voices echoed toward us from the cliffs beyond. The villagers. The mob. “They’ll be here any moment.” To Thierry, she added, “Is there a back entrance?”

He nodded with supreme effort. He still couldn’t speak, however, instead pointing to the bed. Beau rushed to shift it. Below, a heap of ropes and rusted pots hid a trapdoor. Kicking them aside, he struggled to lift the iron handle. “Thank God you have a carriage, Célie.”

“I don’t—well, actually, I”—she wrung her hands frantically before finishing in a rush—“the wheel shaft snapped on the rocks.”

Beau whipped around to stare at her. “It what?”

“The whole mechanism is completely busted. We can’t use it.”

“You said you had a carriage!” Beau heaved at the door with renewed purpose. “That implies a functional one.”

Célie stamped her foot, her eyes wide on the door. “Yes, well, no one would have let me come along otherwise!”

“Explain.” Ignoring them both, I spoke through numb lips. My voice shook as I looked up at Coco. “Please.”

She knelt beside us, face softening infinitesimally as she reached out to brush Lou’s forehead. “La Petite Larme reflects the truth. It cannot lie.”

“How?”

“I told you. Its mirror came from a drop of L’Eau Mélancolique. The waters have magical properties. Sometimes they heal, sometimes they harm.” She glanced back at the open door, craning her neck to see beyond it. The sun had fully risen now. We’d run out of time. “But they always tell the truth.”

I shook my head in a slow, disoriented movement, even as the villagers’ voices grew louder. They’d round the bend at any second. “No. I mean how is she—how is she inside of—” But I couldn’t finish the question. My throat closed up around the words. I dropped my gaze back to Lou. To the blisters on her lips. Self-loathing churned in my stomach. I hadn’t noticed. How could I not have noticed?

“There’s a spell in my aunt’s grimoire,” Coco explained quickly. Individual voices could be heard now. Individual words. She renewed her efforts to pull me to my feet. “A spell of possession. Old magic.” Possession. I closed my eyes as Coco’s voice darkened. “My aunt betrayed us.”

“But why? We promised her the Chateau—”

“Perhaps Morgane did too.”

“A little help here?” Beau panted. My eyes snapped open as Célie darted to join him.

“But it makes no sense,” I insisted, voice hardening. “Why would she ally with the witch who’s abused your coven at every turn?”

Hinges shrieked as Beau and Célie finally managed to open the trapdoor. The voices outside grew louder in response. Purposeful. Agitated. When neither Coco nor I moved, Beau waved animatedly toward the earthen tunnel. “Shall we?”